Robert Sapolsky Quotes

Robert Sapolsky

Profession : Scientist

Birth : April 6, 1957

One definitely wants to have a functioning hippocampus. It's all about learning and memory, the part blown out of the water by Alzheimer's disease. It's also the part that is most vulnerable to the effects of stress.

Robert Sapolsky

We're lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren't working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it's time to try something new.

Robert Sapolsky

If I were to try to break into the world of modern dance, after the first few rejections the logical response might be, practice even more. But after the 12,000th rejection, maybe I should realize this isn't a viable career option.

Robert Sapolsky

The first roller coaster I ever went on in my life wasn't until college.

Robert Sapolsky

I was very sheltered, very bookish and, basically, skittish about life. My parents were both older when I came along and they didn't do things like take vacations.

Robert Sapolsky

Baboons are poster children for psychosocial stress, living in troops with bruising and shifting dominance hierarchies among males and high rates of male aggression.

Robert Sapolsky

Being president does seem a lot more stressful than being vice president.

Robert Sapolsky

If some baboons just happen to be good at seeing water holes as half full instead of half empty... we should be able to as well.

Robert Sapolsky

Baboons have the exact physiology as humans do. They also get the same stress-related illnesses, such as ulcers and heart disease.

Robert Sapolsky

Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.

Robert Sapolsky

Regardless of your sex, if you have elevated testosterone levels in your blood, you're more likely to think a face with a neutral expression is instead looking threatening.

Robert Sapolsky

But I like schlocky violent movies, but I'm for strict gun control. But then there was a time I was at a laser tag place, and I had such a good time hiding in a corner shooting at people. In other words, I'm your basic confused human when it comes to violence.

Robert Sapolsky

For moral judgment, I think the most interesting trends in neuroscience are the ways in which judgments vary as a function of how emotionally salient the situation is.

Robert Sapolsky

Go get yourself stressed all the time and the common cold becomes more common.

Robert Sapolsky

Not a whole lot of us are wrestling somebody for a canned food item in the supermarket or having an ax fight in the jungle clearing. Instead, we sit and think about taxes and the ozone layer.

Robert Sapolsky

If a male primate is mean to a female primate, her whole family will come after him. We don't have that sort of accountability in industrial societies.

Robert Sapolsky

Primates are really well designed to see who is not keeping up their end of the deal.

Robert Sapolsky